Hey all. I used to roam this forum way back in the day under the name of Ryne the Dashing... I think. Anyway, that's not important.

I'm trying to gather thoughts and information for putting together a Skies of Arcadia inspired Dungeons and Dragons game. I thought the idea was too awesome to have not been done before, but I can't seem to find that to be the case anywhere online. So, apparently, this is virgin territory.

Where I'm coming up with problems is how much of the battle system I want to filch from SoA itself. I've thought about lifting it wholesale, but that would require going back to the game to see how the different characters stats are aligned and how many points they receive for going up a level... etc. etc. But if I use the more traditional D&D scheme, information would have to be translated to make sense in an Arcadian world.

I'm only in the brainstorming session of this game at the moment. I was just wondering if anyone else has either tried this or has thought of running a similar game. All thoughts, opinions, and advice are welcome.

If you're looking at DnD 4e, you could probably most easily turn the Astral Sea and Eberron stuff into Arcadia. Already plenty of magic-powered airships and flying islands. Even airship pirates. Would just be a matter of changing the flavor text, really.

Last edited by Kyyp on Sun Jun 06, 2010 8:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

If you're set on using a version of D&D, the 4th Edition is probably the way to go. The mechanics of 4E probably match the rules of SoA better than any other version of the game: weapon users and spellcasters retain parity with each other at high levels, there are fewer setting-inappropriate spells like Invisibility and Wish, healing someone in the middle of combat is viable, everybody gets cool special powers to use in combat, and the ties between game mechanics and setting are kept to a minimum. Just reskin everything like Kyyp said: Vyse becomes a Tempest Fighter or a Two-Blade Ranger, and Fina becomes a Hybrid Cleric/Invoker.

The problem with 4E D&D is that it isn't really all that amenable to homebrewing, because it's put together so meticulously and so well that when you start bringing new rules into the game it just becomes jarring. If you want to change the game to be more like Skies then you're better off using something else.

I don't think reverse-engineering the SoA battle system on paper is a really great idea, because pen and paper rpgs are a very different animal from Skies. You're better off trying to figure out how to represent the "ideas" of Skies rather than directly adapting the statistics from the video game. So if you want to homebrew, start with an existing generic rpg system and customize it for Skies. You could use anything from the rules-lite FATE to the ultra-crunchy GURPS, or something in-between those like True20 or Unisystem.

I actually tried coming up with a standalone system for creating S-Moves about six years ago. I started with a basic metric of how much damage someone should be able to do to a single target for a given cost in spirit points and extrapolated out how valuable certain modifiers to this attack were worth. For instance, an area attack that could hit up to six enemies would be worth between 1x and 6x as much as the attack that could only hit one enemy (depending on the circumstances) and priced accordingly. An attack that would only work in certain circumstances (such as a Slaying Attack modifier that would make the attack able to deal damage only if that damage would be enough to kill the enemy) would be available at a discount. If I were to re-do it today I'd re-examine some of my assumptions but I think I'd take the same general approach.

No, no, no, no, no. 4th Ed. is too weird on its own. Working with 3rd ed. is much more simple and the rules/guidelines are much more malleable, especially regarding magic. PDF files of all the manuals are everywhere. I'm game either way.

No, no, no, no, no. 4th Ed. is too weird on its own. Working with 3rd ed. is much more simple and the rules/guidelines are much more malleable, especially regarding magic. PDF files of all the manuals are everywhere. I'm game either way.

Really the problem is with the spell list itself. All the best spells let you do things like make your whole party invisible or summon demons from alternate dimensions or go back in time and alter historical events. Spell-casters in Skies can't really do that. You'd have to pare down the spell lists quite a bit. There are big chunks of the game that don't have any relevance to Skies, too, such as any of the cleric/paladin abilities that involve the undead and the druid's wild shape. Really I'd start with the True20 system, which is like 3rd Ed. D&D except breezier and designed so that it can be more easily adapted to specific settings.

I was thinking today about how to do ship-to-ship combat in a way that isn't absolutely boring. About a year ago I came up with an idea for treating space battles between space opera ships of the line as contests not between two ship stat blocks (this would probably be boring), but as a conflict between the officers on one vessel and the officers on the other, with the two ships serving as intervening transfer functions. I'll write something up later.